Avoid McDonald's. Will Gadd's Wisdom For Staying Fit

I’m now 45 years old. A middle aged guy. My life has changed radically with each decade, and I’ve done a lot of stuff ...

I’m now 45 years old. A middle aged guy. My life has changed radically with each decade, and I’ve done a lot of stuff that isn’t really award-worthy. But there has almost always been one constant that I’m actually proud of: Nearly every single day I do something physical. I count every hour in motion as a victory.

Every time I slip out of the house when the kids are asleep in the morning or evening and bike, hike, run, ski or just walk for an hour or two it’s a victory.

You see, as someone smarter once figured out, an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. So if I stay at rest for more than a day or two then I’m likely to stay there. Screw that, I’ve got to keep in motion. I can see what happens to people when they stop moving. They die.

I figure the type of movement is less important than the movement itself. I see a super fat lady out walking up a steep hill on a street and think, “Damn, that must be hard. You are a legend. All the houses you’re walking past right now? They’re full of people who make excuses not to get out and walk. And you’re out here going at it. You’re my hero.” I never say this because I don’t want to seem patronizing, but I truly feel it. I see the old guy cranking the Grouse Grind and think, “I want to be you.” I value my stolen hour in the gym as much as I value a day in the mountains; a day in the mountains is easy once you’ve left the desk, but the day I had to fight for an hour at the gym was a victory over life’s demands. And every day in the mountains was surely a great day too…

I go through airports all the time and see what the North American “lifestyle” is doing to people. The farther south you go in North America in general the fatter people get. And airports are where nutritional truth is revealed; I just finished up a meal at an airport restaurant and spent some time perusing what other people were eating. As usual, the rather large dude had a massive plate of nachos, a fried burrito disaster literally dripping with something gelatinous, and a diet Coke. The skinny bastard had a beer, tacos, and left most of the chips (not me, I was hungry as hell and ate ‘em). I got onto the last flight of the day behind two large people carrying a bag full of licorice and other sugar; their kids were already super sized, and that just sucks for them. What sucks more is that huge parents and fat elementary-school kids are now the norm, not the exception. Something is wrong.